A dairy analyst says he doesn’t expect COVID surges to
impact demand as severely as in 2020 but they continue to limit markets.
Ben Laine with Rabobank it could take few months for dairy
demand to pick up.
“It is getting a little bit of pause, a little bit of
hesitation in terms of are we going to stay on that same trajectory, so I think
we’re taking a little bit of a break in terms of the demand strength that we
had seen building,” he explains.
Laine says most food service establishments have adapted to
the pandemic but he’s still watching how schools, especially following USDA’s
extension of the free school lunch program, will impact demand.
“I think the option of free school lunch combined with kids
largely being back to physically wait in that lunch line are going to be positive
for demand for dairy,” he says.
Rabobank recently released its global dairy quarterly report
which Laine says projects farmgate milk prices on a high side for much of the
world, but rising inputs and downside risk could have a sense of Delta blues.
--Brownfield AgNews